Divide Grows in Southeast Over Offshore Drilling Plan

KURE BEACH, N.C. — On a recent frigid night, anxious residents, many in “Protect Our Coast” sweatshirts, packed the town hall here, spilled onto the lawn, and then erupted in cheers as their town government gaveled in a resolution urging President Obama to block oil drilling off their shoreline. “Some things are just too precious to risk,” Mayor Emilie Swearingen said.

That afternoon, 140 miles inland in Raleigh, the state capital, Obama administration officials and oil company representatives had outlined plans to move forward with the drilling before a very different crowd, and state lawmakers liked what they heard. “You’re talking about creating over 100,000 jobs,” said Michael Hager, the House Republican leader. “You’re doggone right this is good for the state.”

Within weeks, the Obama administration is expected to release a proposal to open up vast tracts of federal waters in the southern Atlantic to oil and gas drilling for the first time, and a divide is growing between the Southeast’s coast and its landlocked capitals. The plan, written by the Interior Department, is expected to delineate the waters that would eventually be auctioned and leased to energy companies, which in turn would bring the drilling industry to the banks of Georgia, Virginia and North and South Carolina, along with thousands of oil rigs well over the horizon from the beach.

The move has the backing of the Republican governors of Georgia, North Carolina and South Carolina, and the Democratic governor of Virginia, along with Republican majorities in all those state legislatures. From Raleigh to Richmond, statehouse denizens see new jobs and billions of dollars from royalty revenues to improve roads, schools and public salaries. Among the highest profile politicians in the capitals, at least one, Virginia’s lieutenant governor, Ralph S. Northam, is opposed, although his voice is lonely. Last Thursday, he sent a letter to Obama administration officials asking them to exclude Virginia’s waters from the offshore drilling plan.

“I grew up on Virginia’s Eastern Shore and have worked just about every job one might have on the Chesapeake Bay,” he wrote.

Coastal residents in towns and cities like Norfolk, Charleston and Kure Beach share his concerns — and see potential disaster, even if the rigs are no less than 50 miles offshore and well out of sight. Fearful of a repeat of the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill, which killed 11 workers and spewed 200 million gallons of crude into the Gulf of Mexico, at least 106 coastal towns in the Southeast have passed resolutions urging the Interior Department not to move ahead. More than 80 East Coast state legislators and the owners of about 1,000 coastal businesses have signed letters to Mr. Obama opposing the drilling.

“For an uneducated guy who needs a job, it’s a good opportunity,” allowed John Hicks, a retired tool and die worker, fishing off the pier in Kure Beach. “But I also think about what it means for my 11-year-old daughter. An accident that messes up the coast could destroy her future. And I guess I care more about her future.”

Even if the rigs are out of sight, some opponents fear the transformation of the quiet Outer Banks into bustling oil towns.

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A town hall meeting in January in Kure Beach, which unanimously passed a resolution to oppose seismic testing off its shores.CreditTravis Dove for The New York Times

“Our area has a billion-dollar tourist industry,” said Monica Thibodeau, a member of the Town Council in Duck, N.C. “The risk of drilling isn’t worth losing that.”

The split is more regional than partisan. Coastal Republicans fear the destruction of their tourist industries as much as seaside Democrats, while landlocked members of both parties envision new revenue for schools and highways.

Representative Mark Sanford, a former South Carolina governor and a conservative Republican from Charleston, is fiercely critical of his state’s current Republican governor, Nikki R. Haley, for her support of the drilling. “It’s a lesson to how to be tone deaf to the American public,” he said. “Hearings were held in this congressional district and communities up and down the coast, and the response was overwhelming — they came out with resolutions against the drilling. There is an amazing disconnect between what people are saying in the statehouses and in the areas that would be most impacted.”

In Raleigh, State Representative Rodney Moore, Democrat of Charlotte, saw things the way Ms. Haley does: “It’s a good thing if it can generate revenue for our state, if it can be done safely.”

The fight is playing out as a global oil glut has driven down prices to more than 10-year lows and depressed domestic exploration and extraction. But the industry sees the Atlantic drilling, which would not start for at least five years, as a long-term investment in a future in which oil prices rebound and supplies remain volatile.

“If there’s one thing for sure in the oil and gas industry, it’s change,” said Andrew Radford, a policy adviser for the American Petroleum Institute, the oil and gas industry lobby. “Having new exploration opportunities is really important for the industry to replace the resources we’re producing now.”

The Atlantic Coast States’ interest in pursuing drilling off their shores is relatively recent, as is the legal authority to do that work. While offshore drilling has been an integral part of the coastal economy of the Gulf of Mexico since the 1940s, lawmakers from both parties in the Atlantic Coast States resisted the push by oil companies to explore Atlantic waters, supporting a longstanding legal moratorium on Pacific and Atlantic coastal drilling. That calculus changed after a 2006 law, written by former Senator Mary L. Landrieu, Democrat of Louisiana, which for the first time required oil companies to pay a portion of offshore drilling royalties directly to nearby Gulf Coast states.

Until passage of that law, oil companies drilling in federal waters were required to pay royalties only to the United States Treasury. Since passage, Louisiana alone has taken in more than $10 billion in new royalty revenue.

Coastal lawmakers persuaded Congress to lift the offshore drilling ban in 2008, hoping the Landrieu legislation could be expanded to include their states, and they have since pressed Mr. Obama to lease the coastal waters for drilling.

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A resident fishing in Kure Beach. Many coastal towns in the Southeast fear the effect that oil drilling could have on the environment and tourism.CreditTravis Dove for The New York Times

“This is the exact opposite of what he should be doing,” said Jacqueline Savitz, a vice president of Oceana, an environmental group that is aggressively campaigning in the coastal states to build local opposition to the drilling.

But Obama administration officials say they are listening to the elected officials in the Southeastern states. The administration has not advanced plans to drill off the northeast Atlantic or Pacific coastlines, where governors are still opposed to it.

“Almost every decision we make is about balancing the economic potential and the environmental consequences,” said Abigail Ross Hopper, who directs the Interior Department’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management.

The administration also points to its efforts to improve drilling safety ahead of expanding offshore oil exploration. The Interior Department is expected in the coming weeks to complete new safety regulations on offshore drilling equipment, intended specifically to prevent the failures that led to the Deepwater Horizon explosion.

The forthcoming Interior Department proposal will not be the last word. The administration will continue to take public comment on the proposal until it finishes the drilling plan later this year. In response, the oil and gas industry and environmental groups are ramping up advocacy campaigns. Environmental groups are a constant presence at coastal town hall meetings and are planning advertising and telephone campaigns to urge more voters to speak out.

The American Petroleum Institute has become a regular fixture in Southeastern statehouses and town hall meetings and is paying to host events coordinated with local schools to highlight job opportunities in science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

Oil industry officials have also sought to allay fears that oil drilling would hurt tourist towns. “The development will not be in small communities; it will be in ports and industrial areas,” Mr. Radford told the Raleigh meeting.

So far, the pro-drilling faction is winning. But the fight has begun to reshape local politics. In Kure Beach, Ms. Swearingen’s predecessor as mayor, Dean Lambeth, supported drilling, had won three terms and hoped to win a fourth. Last year, Ms. Swearingen ran against him with an anti-drilling stance — and won.